The sun shone through her as if she were transparent, white rings of smoke escaping her pale lips and gliding through the cool morning air. It was 4 AM. She didn’t care; she’d been awake all night. That was how my baby was, she’d never fall asleep when the rest of the city was, she had too many things happening in her brain all at once for it to allow her to rest. And it would have bothered me immensely, if I weren’t the exact same way. And this is how it went every morning. We sat out on a balcony, or a porch, wherever we ended up, with tired eyes and longing, I sketched her. I tried so hard to capture her on paper, using all different mediums. Charcoal, Lead, watercolors, none could do her any justice. While my pieces may have closely resembled her, they couldn’t possibly have reproduced what made her beautiful. And I don’t even know what it was about that girl, how she could take me on adventures to forests and rivers and mountains at god-awful hours, and force me to fall in love with her a little more every second. And that one day when we were young and she took me to her house and her parents were so happy, and she had this aura about her, like she loved this place, like she loved it but she couldn’t stay, that’s when I knew I had to be with her for as long as I could. And she could speak volumes with her eyes, and she could write novels with her body, and she could bring down countries with a smile. I’d always believed that kind of power was reserved for God. But when I met her, and that first night when she wore only my t-shirt and that lace thing and it brought me to my knees, I knew God was bullshit. Children’s fantasies and fucking lies, nothing as important as this force, lust, love, power, control. And so we traveled together, and we listened to The Smiths, and we read great poetry together, and we saw beautiful architecture, and we begged, and borrowed, and stole, until we could make our dreams come true. You might think that made us bad, but we were young and adventurous, and broke, and we never took any more than we needed. If we ever had extra, we gave it to those who were in more dire straits. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but, I miss my days of endless wonder, and bliss, when she and I, sat outside; her in my shirt and me in my boxers. We accomplished nothing great, but we were so happy, and worldly, and so at peace with everything that mattered. And I could fit my whole world and a bottle of vodka in my arms. And we drank, and we smoked, and I don’t condone drug use, but I’m not going to deny that we didn’t do it. And all that mattered was that we had each other, and it was the best time of my life. Listen, all I want you to know, is that no matter who you are, you will have your revelation some day, you will meet that person, or people, or find that place, or try that thing, that will get you through until the end of time. Because even though she is long gone, she still lives in my memory, and the memories of our family. And you deserve your happiness. You think you’ll never find it, or that it will definitely be a person of the opposite gender, and in my case, it was. But you won’t know until it happens. So all you can do, is immerse yourself in joy, get rid of toxic people, fall in love with pictures and music and films, make yourself happy until you can find it, your infinity. And when you do, well, all I can say is, good luck.
